2 Abstract The following paper discusses the ideological and aesthetic contexts discernible in the poetry of the Norwegian author Tor Ulven ( ). Generally considered the major Norwegian poet to emerge after the Second World War, Tor Ulven was, in his own self-taught way, a poeta doctus, although his extensive knowledge of European literary traditions, languages, philosophy, music and paintings rarely if ever burdened his knife-sharp poetic images. Nonetheless, in order to better understand and appreciate Ulven s work, I believe it to be of considerable importance to identify the rich and manifold traditions underlying his poetry. That is the aim of the following discussion, which in many regards remains a subjective reading of certain aspects and characteristics of Ulven s poetry. The paper argues that these aspects and characteristics share, in Ludwig Wittgenstein s formulation, a certain family resemblance with a number of Ulven s predecessors fellow writers and philosophers alike whom I elaborate upon in my discussion. I agree with and write from the American poet and translator Rosanna Warren s belief that poetry is, finally, a family matter, involving the strains of birth, love, power, death, and inheritance. (Fables of the Self, 11) The two major books yet on Tor Ulven s authorship Janike Kampevold Larsen s Å være vann i vannet and Torunn Borge and Henning Hagerup s Skjelett

3 og hjerte point to and emphasize a different lineage than the one accentuated in the pages to follow. This does not mean that any one approach or emphasis has, to a degree, got it wrong. Rather, it is an indication of the wealth of influences and contexts to be found in Ulven s poetry contexts which the growing scholarly industry around Ulven has yet to map fully. A direct interpretative analysis of Ulven s poetry as such therefore comes second in my discussion. Furthermore, to balance the somewhat subjective approach taken in this paper relying as it does more on the free associations of personal responses than a fixed, theoretical framework I interweave my discussion throughout with Ulven s own comments on his work. These were given in an extensive interview to the Norwegian literary magazine Vagant in 1993, two years before Tor Ulven s self-inflicted death. Together with my own suggestions on the context(s) of Ulven s poetry, these authoritative (in every sense of that word) comments form the backbone of my discussion.

4 I Isolation and Circulation The Norwegian writer Tor Ulven ( ) belongs to a group of such 20 th century poets as Paul Celan, Sylvia Plath, Cesare Pavese and others whose lives were cut short by suicide, and who have since risen to a near legendary status among readers and scholars alike, who continue to champion their works. As an indication of the overwhelming literary industry surrounding these poets, roughly two thousand titles are now available on Paul Celan s poetry alone. More often than not, however, these authors are read from the easily deceptive vantage point of their tragic demise, in search of answers. The suicide becomes a hermeneutical tool, an all-purposeful master key unlocking the most obscure secrets and, of course, interpretative difficulties presented by the work. But the driving force behind the poetry of these illfated authors is life and its possibilities, for sadness and joy, rather than personal death, which in every person s life is of course an inevitable fact but never a reality to which there can be a witness. To differentiate between death in poetry and death as such is therefore a necessary distinction. For poetical death death as a theme or inspiration is always a confirmation of life and its condition, whereas death by suicide is the permanent rejection of life, and thus of any conceivable poetic utterances attempting to describe it. To read Celan s, Plath s or Ulven s works solely in terms of their tragic demise is therefore a questionable and, indeed, a very limited method. And in most cases it provides no reliable answers, no more than a full stop at the end of an unfinished sentence discloses its content.

5 By the time of his death in 1995, then only 41 years of age, Tor Ulven was already considered among the more noteworthy authors of his generation. Time has now secured his position as one of the most significant writers in Norway in the latter part of the 20 th century. Ulven s books have still to reach a more general circulation, however, when compared to other key authors before him, such as the poet Olav H. Hauge or the short-story writer Kjell Askildsen, who both continue to enjoy a wide readership. Ulven is still very much a poet s poet or, even, as the American poet John Ashbery said of Elizabeth Bishop: a poet s poet s poet, such is the cult-like status he has among fellow writers. Admittedly, Ulven s world view is darker and his approach more inhuman in the amplest sense of that word than that of Hauge or Askildsen, Ulven s grim emphasis perhaps accounting for a less widespread reception than his work deserves. The natural world which existed before man s emergence as a species and which will continue to exist after our disappearance, is one of Ulven s central themes; his stern, ikke-menneskelige subject-matter accounting for my use of the word inhuman here above. By no means is Ulven s poetry obscure, however. Death, love, time and nature are recurring subjects throughout, such basic and fundamental themes accounting for the majority of Ulven s poetry. Ulven s importance as an author lies in the detailed and comprehensive world view expressed in his poems reiterated imaginatively from work to work with penetrating insight into the human condition and in his language; the linguistic concentration and imagery of his works having few if any equals in Norwegian poetry. References to current events in Norwegian society, or direct allusions to his own life, are rare in Ulven s authorship. Little can therefore be gathered about daily life in Oslo in the second half of

6 the 20 th century from Ulven s books. It should also be mentioned that Ulven spent most of the 80 s closed off from the outer world, unable to leave the confines of his apartment due to a severe anxiety disorder. Such isolation in his childhood home in suburban Oslo, which Ulven inherited after his parents died and where he lived until his suicide did not entail complete disconnection from the outer world, however. On the contrary, Ulven kept abreast of social and cultural matters, both in Norway and internationally. He also possessed a comprehensive knowledge of European literature, art and philosophy. Ulven was a self-taught francophone, translating among others the poetry of René Char into Norwegian. In terms of formal education, Ulven did not acquire any university degrees or diplomas other than his license to operate a crane, which was Ulven s livelihood as a young man, along with other kinds of construction work. He was also a skillful harmonica player, earning a reputation as such while performing with a small blues band in the pubs of Oslo before his psychological illness aggravated, forcing him deeper and deeper into a world of anxiety and despair a world which Ulven finally did not escape. Background From day to day, Ulven s place of relief was to be found in books, as well as in works of art and music, both of which play a significant role in his poetry. As to Ulven s love of music, the blues harmonicist Little Walter was a particular favorite and, according to Ulven, a source of constant inspiration as perhaps is fitting, considering the instrument. Many of Ulven s poems also

7 draw heavily on representational art, in their quietude and sharp imagery referring both directly and obliquely to particular works of art, as Janike Kampevold Larsen has pointed out in her book on Tor Ulven s authorship, Å være vann i vannet (2008). As stated before, few are Ulven s equals when it comes to linguistic accuracy and the striking vividness of his poetry, attributes which undoubtedly can be traced back to his passion for, and comprehensive knowledge of, European art. More importantly, however, when accounting for Ulven s economy of expression and rich imagery, is the tradition of modern poetry under which his work falls. A tradition which preached maximum concentration of language, as well as emphasizing the fundamental part played by the poetic image in reaching the desired density of expression. No word should be superfluous. The linguistic ornamentation, lushness and sentimentality characterizing earlier traditions was done away with, establishing accuracy and objectivity as the two central qualities of modern poetry, achieved through clear and hard images. Ulven s poetry does correspond to such aesthetics, although he is of course his own author, adhering only to his own poetics. Yet the mark of modernism can certainly be seen in poems such as the following, appearing in Ulven s third collection, Forsvinningspunkt (1981), which established him as one of the most noteworthy poets of his generation: Være vann i vannet. Være stein i steinen.

9 authors as Tarjei Veesas and Kjell Heggelund, it is perhaps his discussion of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and the Italian poetphilosopher Giacomo Leopardi which are of most interest. Both were known infamous, even for their dark existentialism, and are generally considered among the principal advocators of pessimism as a philosophical and existential tradition. The critical reception of Ulven s work has more often than not branded his poetry with the same label. Ulven himself, however, emphasizes quite strongly in the previously mentioned interview that a pessimistic outlook is less a subjective, individual Weltanschauung than a rational conclusion about the conditions of human life a conclusion reached if one does not shy away from acknowledging the multitudinous facts of human misery and the vulnerability of human existence in light of man s appetite for destruction, to call the Cold War nuclear policy of mutual assured destruction (MAD) that: Hver dag er en katastrofe. Hver dag er dommedag. Det er bare å se på nyhetene. Helvete er en levende realitet, for å si det slik. Det har alltid vært her. Hvis det er noe som kjennetegner vår tid spesielt, så må det være at destruktiviteten har fått en utløsningsknapp for en bombe i hånden, istedenfor en stridsøks. Det øker selvsagt dumhetens og ondskapens potensiale betraktelig. By the same token, Ulven refuses to define Schopenhauer as a pessimist, but considers him rather an ahistorisk humanist og rasjonalist. Ulven undoubtedly wished for his own works and ideas to be grouped within the same tradition of rational humanist thinking, emphasizing as he did that the foundations of his thought lay rather within the realist strand of European modernism than pessimism as an existential and/or literary approach. Jeg er ikke kulturpessimist eller apokalyptiker, he firmly states in the Vagant

10 interview. Å henvise til virkeligheten Judging from Ulven s varied collection of essays as well as the wealth of education he displays in the Vagant interview, one can deduce how wide a scope of his own art he possessed and how comprehensive his reading was. Despite such erudition, however, Ulven s poetry is never bookish nor pedantic. Correspondingly, his voice is never overblown nor his diction pompous. Ulven s style is rather characterized by plainness and aversion to superfluous ornamentation. The content of his expression is more often than not arrived at from an unexpected corner, with a matching originality of imagery deriving its impact from Ulven s peculiar Galgenhumor: Stille i salen. En utgravd kjeve lener seg over mikrofonen og skriker med istidens utdødde stemme. (SD, 96) Asked about his yearlong seclusion among books and how reading had

12 de knapt har satt sine bein. Dersom språket var et lukket system, var det greit. Men litteraturen kunsten i det hele tatt kan ikke la være å henvise til virkeligheten og den konkrete erfaring. Ulven s poetry is in keeping with what he urges for here. It is a direct report on reality with a particular emphasis on the suffering and bleakness of life everywhere apparent, if one chooses to look. By no means, however, does Ulven s poetry flirt with suffering in a theatrical manner. Unlike the Romantics, who could not decide whether suffering was a blessing or a burden while celebrating their Weltschmerz in song, Ulven s position towards pain is clear. In every person s life, tragedy is unavoidable. Not as an isolated exception to the rule of an otherwise happy life, but rather as the fundamental state of human existence exemplified by the misery of each day and inherent in each person s final demise, but also in the predictable extinction of the human race. A view which Ulven this broadest of timeoriented poets is adamant to declare a living reality, here and now. By expressing such a fundamentally dark-infested world view, one s language runs the danger of becoming vague and abstract, and, perhaps more importantly the bane of every writer dull and teeming with platitudes. Yet Ulven s knife-sharp and often highly idiosyncratic descriptions of bones and skulls, insects, fossils and other traces of life, ancient and recent never succumb to mundane banalities. Life and death; Ulven renders both visible through his matchless imagery, more often that not delving into the world of the dead, into the fossilized layers of our subterranean prehistory. But the aim of such descriptions is not to shock or abuse the reader with their possible morbidness:

13 Jeg er ikke interessert i å være morbid eller makaber. Det har kanskje forekommet unntaksvis, men bare unntaksvis. Døden som makaber og konkret realitet er ikke mitt felt. Jeg skriver distansert om det ubehagelige fordi jeg vil forstå det, ikke flørte med groteskeriet omkring det, eller svelge i uhyrligheter. Altså døden som betingelse, ikke som spesialeffekt. Det er det tragiske som opptar meg. Ulven s method, to write distansert about the disquieting, endows his poetry with placeless and timeless qualities. As stated before, little can be gathered from his work about the quotidian details of Norwegian society. Direct biographical references are rare, and of a general nature when certain lived instances do seem to lie behind the poetry. To give a contrasting example, Ulven s personal history is by no means the point of departure for his poetry in the same manner as daily life is for the American confessionalists, authors such as Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell and John Berryman who describe broken marriages, mental breakdowns and personal sorrow with relentless honesty sadomasochistic brutality, even in their works. Despite the pain which dominated Ulven s life, his poetry is not personal in the traditional understanding of the word that it presents the interior monologue of a soul filled with sorrow a monologue to which the reader is an intrusive listener. In Torunn Borge s and Henning Hagerup s words: Tor Ulvens forfatterskap er likevel ikke en protokollføring over hans egen sykdomshistorie, like lite som for eksempel Schopenhauers filosofi er en dokumentasjon av en privat Weltschmerz. Ulvens bøker er preget av hans pessimistiske syn på tilværelsen, samtidig som de qua kunst installerer denne pessimismen i tid-rom-forhold som i en uhyre grad

14 transcenderer det private. (Skjelett og hjerte, 13) Contrary to self-absorption, Ulven s poetry is extroversive and dialectic not least, I would claim, because of his predilection for the 2 nd person pronoun du in his poetic language. Ulven and Gunnar Björling Through Ulven s use of the grammatical second person as an addressee of his poetry, one is tempted to see a poetics aimed towards illustrating our shared destiny. As such, by invoking so frequently the unspecific receiver inherent in Ulven s du, the personal world view expressed is opened up and rendered communal between reader and writer. Not least is this the case when Ulven s poetry refers to the fundamentals of human life to time, nature and death, themes which appear over and over in his works. Every du may therefore allude both inward to the implicit lyrical I operating behind the poem as well as outward, to the reader, grammatically identified as an addressee through the personal pronoun. As a consequence, more often than not in Ulven s poetry do speaker and listener seem addressed simultaneously, and are as such both present at the same time: Din egen stemme på lydbåndet, det er speilbildet som forteller at også du

15 hører til i en steinalder. (SD, 174) The addressee of Ulven s du becomes less clear in his more enigmatic poems. Its scope broadens, as Ulven so to speak attempts to capture what lies beyond words. In such instances, his poetry bears a considerable resemblance to the syntactically shattered yet condensed lyrics of Gunnar Björling, the Finnish-Swedish modernist who never enjoyed public perusal but was, like Ulven, highly regarded among his fellow poets. Björling s work has also greatly influenced later generations. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Ulven has taken a pointer or two from Björling s experimental verse, the Finland-Swede widely regarded as one of Sweden s most influential and innovative practitioner of modern poetry in the first half of the 20 th century. Admittedly, Björling s work is a good deal brighter and its near-religious celebration of the miracle of life at odds with Ulven s dark and godless worldview. Yet the enigmatic sometimes apparent in Ulven s poetry does have a certain affinity with Björling s serene nature imagery and its ability to capture the near-inexpressible. Björling s penchant for the 2 nd person pronoun apart from fragmentary yet condensed syntax, nameless sequences of interrelated poems and clear, nature-derived imagery is another structural device in common between the poets, with Ulven here endowing his du with the same mystical properties so characteristic of Björling s poetry. The following poem closes Etter oss, tegn (1980), Ulven s second collection of poems, indicating the tone and subject-matter laying ahead in the three masterpieces which followed Forsvinningspunkt (1981), Det tålmodige (1987) and Søppelsolen (1989):

17 Aldrig såg jag som när på morgonen jag dig Som ett före vaknandet ditt anlet ren-gestalt This is poetry at its most economic (although, as will be discussed later, a certain poem by Emily Dickinson shares Björling s linguistic concentration, albeit in a different manner), each word here carrying en vanvittig tyngde, as Ulven claimed characteristic of the merciless nature of poetic form, his remark undoubtedly referring first and foremost to the frugality of Modernism the poetic form which Gunnar Björling was among the first to practice and establish as a tradition in Scandinavia. Ulven and Paul Celan Another poet with which Ulven shares a considerable family resemblance is Paul Celan. A Jewish Romanian by birth, suffering persecutions after the annexing of Romania under Nazi Germany in 1940 and seeing both his parents killed, Celan emigrated to France after the war but wrote his poetry almost exclusively in German his mother tongue, but also the tongue of his oppressors. Widely regarded as one of the major European poets to emerge out of the Second World War, it was to a great extent due to Celan s poetry that the German sociologist Theodor W. Adorno would later revise his (in)famous dictum claiming that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. As is characteristic of Ulven s poetry, Celan s work is likewise rarely

18 bound to a particular place or time. Todesfuge, maybe his most famous poem, is in many ways an exception to this rule. Celan s later dislike of the poem, however, is perhaps an indication of how drastically his poetics changed as his writing progressed. Indeed, Celan became to resent the poems popularity, refusing re-publication in anthologies, as he considered its references and diction too lucid and interpretations thereof too nonchalant. This happened in tandem with the ever-increasing condensation of Celan s language and further obscurity of his imagery. Yet the occasion and aim of his verse remained the same to attempt an understanding of det ubehagelige, in Ulven s words, and to express the reality of horror and suffering which human cruelty and therefore the world itself is capable of bringing about. Celan was a Jew writing in German, his mother tongue, about his own experience of the Holocaust and its consequences. Such a background is undeniably a more pertinent cause for the pain running through his poetry than Ulven s working class surroundings. Yet in terms of subject-matter and existential outlook, both poets share a similar point of departure in their bleak yet realistic poetry. If we understand one despair, we understand every despair, according to the American poet and short-story writer Raymond Carver. As such, we feel the same pain as humans, although the cause thereof is different. The quiet despair lurking behind Ulven s and Celan s lines is therefore similar, despite different origins. Despair is also the origin of words, a driving force born out of horror and destruction destruction which the poetry of both Celan and Ulven attempts to express, in order to fathom its meaning and even endow it with life, again. The following poem is from Celan s second book of verse, Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (1955):

21 to the semantic density of both Celan s and Ulven s work, the latter claiming as previously mentioned that [l]yrikken er en nådeløs sjanger, hvor hvert ord må bære en vanvittig tyngde. In light of translational difficulties deriving from such careful and dense compositions, it is perhaps fair to say that T.S. Eliot s claim that free verse is a misleading term due to all the metrical formulas still at work in modern poetry is corroborated. But these formulas differ from one poem to the next, not to mention between languages, when a poem needs to be re-shaped again and re-formed, in the strictest sense of the word. In many ways it is therefore fitting to speak of gjendiktning re-poetizing as the translation process is sometimes so appropriately referred to in the Scandinavian languages. Finally, to conclude this hasty comparison between the poetry of Ulven, Björling and Celan, the similar function of the 2 nd person pronoun du in their works is worth mentioning as well. The address entails a wish for company, uttered by the speaker to the listening reader. As a result, the poetry attains an aura of shared human experience. Unlike the particular and personal lyrics of the American confessionalists to use again the same counterexample, although confessional poetry is of course not exclusive to American letters the poetry of Celan, Björling and Ulven expresses a general world view, growing in scope and persuasion with every new work, steadfastly communicating a personal yet mutual sense of being the mutuality of which is attained primarily through their recurrent use of the 2 nd person pronoun du. Furthermore, these poets all rely on a basic vocabulary, with certain themes and even key words cropping up time and again in their work. The imagery of stones, body parts, earth, geological layers, water and prehistoric time to name a few of Ulven s central tropes, many of which in fact overlap with the poetry of Gunnar Björling and Paul

22 Celan, who wove their poems out of similarly elemental patterns. II Man and Nature: Leopardi s Influence Perhaps it is not so far-off to claim that the desire to understand is the driving force behind modern poetry. A colossal work such as Ezra Pound s Cantos is one man s attempt to grasp and portray all the fundamental patterns of human civilization, patterns which all times repeat, from one culture to the next. Not surprisingly, it is Homer s Odysseus who is one of Pound s central heroes, Odysseus who according to Dante s Divina Commedia became a victim to his own unquenchable thirst for wisdom when he attempted to sail past the Pillars of Hercules, denoting the limits of the human world and human knowledge. Disobeying the gods thus, his ship is sunk and his entire crew drowned, in sight of Mount Purgatory. Odysseus s haughtiness, his hybris, becomes his downfall. Ulven s desire for knowledge is of a different kind, and his view on man s place in the natural world in fact contrary to the proto-humanist tradition inherent in Odysseus s words when he eggs his men on for the perilous journey ahead, appealing to their origin and thus duty as men and not animals: a position which would find its echo in the rhetoric of Renaissance humanists later on. In Canto XXVI, Odysseus says: Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti,

23 ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza. Call to mind from whence ye sprang: Ye were not form d to live the life of brutes, But virtue to pursue and knowledge high. Ulven s position, in comparison to the humanist idea of man s centrality in the world, is different to the extent that he refuses to make as clear a distinction between man and nature as Odysseus/Dante here above, a distinction which one could construe as supercilious towards the life man puts himself over. Quite the opposite, man s evanescence in and to nature is one of Ulven s central themes, from the point of view that no distinction can be made between them. The traditional, Western perspective from Genesis and onwards that man s role is to have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, is turned on its head in Ulven s poetry, which as a result is in many ways more inhuman than that of other poets in the sense that man does not occupy center stage alone. Rather, he shares the spotlight with non-human nature in a more democratic manner than we, in our self-absorption, are used to. With stones, water, grass and other sorts of ikke-menneskelig nature, which we nonetheless are an inseparable part of, as Ulven points out time and again in his poems: Det kreves støvler av svartjord, embetsuniform av lav, parykk av myrull, for å stå ubevegelig her, og vente til en blir

24 sporløst født. (SD, 108) The influence or resemblance, rather of one particular poet comes to mind in terms of Ulven s inhuman lifestance: that of the Italian poet-philosopher Giacomo Leopardi, generally considered one of Italy s greatest poets, second perhaps only to Dante. As stated before, Leopardi s poetry and thought influenced Ulven to a great deal, with Randbemerkningar til Leopardis uendilighet, Ulven s essay about his fellow poet and brother-in-thought, appearing in Essays. Leopardi s ideas cannot be fully accounted for here, but a small specimen from his work might serve to illustrate his position towards man and nature, a position which Ulven would later adopt and express in his own poetry. Iceland, in fact, has a small role to play in this example, with Leopardi a notorious devourer of books like Ulven acquainting himself with Iceland and its lava-spewing volcanoes, the alleged portholes to Hell, through old travel literature. Having read as well in the works of Voltaire that no place on earth provides its inhabitants with a more dreadful habitat than Iceland, Leopardi set about writing a small essay titled Dialogo della Nature e di un Islandese, in which Mother Nature and an Icelander engage in a philosophical conversation. The Icelander blames Nature for her cruelty and ruthlessness towards human beings. But Nature answers promptly, asking whether he thinks the natural world has been created for him, and other humans, alone. In a way, this succinct answer epitomizes Leopardi s philosophy, free as it is from the ancient and persevering human centrality of Protagoras s dictum that man is the measure of all things. It has now become apparent that this sort of

25 human-ism can endanger our Earth, should we continue to believe it a right to place our own short-term interests above the interests of the ecosystem as a whole. The ruinous effect of such thinking goes without saying. But the cause thereof, as suggested above, might go as far back as to Christianity s justification for a free entrance to Nature s smörgåsbord that man, as the crowning glory of creation, has dominion over every living creature that moves on the ground, and thus over nature as a whole. This hierarchy, as noted, serves as an argumentational backbone in Odysseus s pep-up speech addressed to his crew mates, emphasizing that it is their destiny as men to subdue nature and overcome her limitations. Leopardi s stance is the opposite. Nature, and not man, occupies the hierarchical zenith of creation. Man falls victim to Nature s caprice, injustice and random cruelty. And should he in his arrogance attempt to subjugate her will under his own, he will soon be put in his place by Nature herself. Yet the Icelander perseveres, claiming that it is not through his own will that he has been born into existence. Rather, it is through the doings and volition of Nature herself that he has come to exist through a natural creation of which he is undeniably a part. Is it, then, not her obligation to prevent her own creation from suffering, much in the same way a host is responsible for the well-being of his guests? But midway through his speech for fairness on behalf of the natural world, demanding human dignity, the Icelander is devoured by two lions. For human dignity is scarcely any concern of Nature. Such concepts are man-made and, in Leopardi s opinion, hardly anything we are entitled to. The critical reception of Ulven s work has pointed out how illusjonløs his poetry is how severe and disinclined to wishful fancy. In this regard, Ulven goes one step further than Leopardi, who in his Zibaldone an

30 Death, Time and the Imagist kortdikt Ulven is to a great extent what might be called an evolutionary author. As a result, the time scope of his poetry is exceptionally broad indeed, almost as broad as can be imagined, by spanning everything from Earth s earliest geological era to the distant (although impending) death of the solar system. As mentioned here above, Ulven wanted to react against how nåtidsrettet our society and thinking has become. In fact, some of his best poems are those who jolt our habitual sense of time, by offering unusual perspectives and through trenchant imagery: I luften, i vinden på vei fra et forsteinet vingepar til et annet svever fuglen (SD, 284) A trademark characteristic of Ulven s sense of time is the double temporal perspective so often at work in his poetry. In the preceding poem, the image denotes both an instant (a snap-shot, as it were) as well as spanning millions of years. The poem occupies two temporal dimensions at once, constantly at play on the boundaries of both gliding between them, yet resting in neither. As Torunn Borge and Henning Hagerup claim in Skjelett og hjerte, their book on Ulven:

32 mellom tider, tider som er markert gjennom verbalformer som er uforenlige innenfor et normalt tempussystem. Vi vet at det vanlige er at grammatikken etablerer tempussystemet fra et jeg-her-nå-perspektiv. Det er dette prinsippet Ulven bryter med, neglisjerer og spiller ut mot verden. Tidsforskyvningene er mange, og de har det til felles at de alltid overskrider det talende nåtidsøyeblikket. Den som snakker, og den som ser, er ikke festet i én tid det er et jeg i fri bevegelse mellom epoker. (79) Ulven of course is not the first poet to have his poetry refer beyond det talende nåtidsøyeblikket. The following kortdikt, by the Swedish poet Verner von Heidenstam, is of a similar kind. Taken from Nya dikter (1915), Heidenstam s last book, the poem is in its tone and perspective a certain indicator of what was to come in the works of the modernists who followed: Om tusen år En dallring i en fjärran rymd, ett minne av gården, som sken fram bland höga träd. Vad hette jag? Vem var jag? Varför grät jag? Förgätit har jag allt, och som en stormsång allt brusar bort bland världarna, som rulla. Apart from early signs of increased density of expression appearing in Heidenstam s language, his distrust of ornament and emphasis on clearly composed imagery, the biggest similarities between Heidenstam and the modernists who followed in his footsteps (Ulven included) are probably most noticeable in terms of form Heidenstam being an early herald of the economic kortdikt as a form for modern poetry. For as a poet, Ulven is first and foremost a writer of short lyrics, the minimal nature of his verse finally forcing him towards prose as mentioned before. Before the transition,

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